BAH GAWD! IT'S COLLEGE FOOTBALL!!! (9/6/2021)

 Beloved, let us gather and sing this morning’s hymn…

Oh dear, it appears Coach Kelley seems to have inserted one of his favorites into the list.  We’ll be counseling him on his choices soon.  

And now…

Glass of water for Mr. Grainger....

1) GLASSES OF WATER FOR THE HOOSIERS, TAR HEELS, HURRICANES, HUSKIES, AND BOTH SETS OF TIGERS!!!   Oh beloved, it is always a trial to see your team go down before Labor Day, yea and verily.   The Condolences team will be making visits this week to several of you.  Oh Sister Taylor, that was a battle of defensive titans, with no long-haired blond warrior to make the rescue at the end.  Oh Sister Rosenthal,  I also share your burden, and so does Deacon Collette:

Speaking of which, the LSU defense is still a “neaux.”  We offer comforting thoughts to Sister Chartlon, Sister Henke, and Brother Saurage, and point out that for 11M/yr you can probably get Jimbo —the price went up recently.  

 

But for true misery, you could have TWO schools and watch them both lose on the same weekend.  Green bean casserole and persimmon pudding to Sister Meacham (UNC, Indiana).  

2) Several teams won, but only deserve hard seltzer (“The Bartles And Jaymes for Millenials!”) for narrowly escaping defeat.  I’m looking at you, Notre Dame (and condolences to Sister Denham). Repent of not coming prepared and letting FSU come all the way back on you!  And Iowa State and Oregon, we see you sitting on the back row, thinking no one notices you playing with your phones!   And you, Ohio State and USC, we saw those halftime scores, quit looking so smug.  No game card for you, Brother Booth. Brother Reid, Brother McDade, you may need to look across town, one of your three rivals is waking up again.  And Sister Novak: 14-0 at the half against Florida Atlantic?    

Yet there is one such team that stands out above the rest...

And so, out of sheer principle, the last can of White Claw this week goes to the Sooners.  Brother Bloss!  This was Tulsa Tulane (worse!).  At home.   On short notice for them of change-of-venue.  And they almost won the game!  This is not a team that is going to survive the Big XII undefeated.

3) Oh Ags, you don’t deserve beer, either.  Yes, you covered the spread, but I was there on the radio (owing to a horrible miscalculation involving Xfinity tiered subscriptions and the lack of ESPNU) and that halftime score was nothing to yell about.  Now to be fair, more than one observer predicted that Kent State’s offense would cause problems in the first half, and that the game would not be put away until late.  But this wasn’t quite accurate on closer inspection.  KSU moved the ball, yes, but could not score (LEON!!!) A&M had the same problem, though, and while King’s picks may be debatable as to “not fair, those passes were deflected,” the fact remains he chose those receivers.  Jimbo may have been running a whole-team diagnostic, true.  But there are questions, and tomorrow is never a guarantee (is Colorado for real this year, at long last?)

Bier hier, bier hier, oder ich fallum! (Junge!)

4)  Celebratory beverages to the Georgia Bulldogs, even though they couldn’t score a point on offense any more than Clemson could.  Virginia Tech, your time may have come again, rejoice.  Penn State winning at Camp Randall is a worthy feat, although that game was a snoozer —and yes, it is a fair question to consider if we carelessly mock that game (16-10, scoreless at the half) when the Big Game Of The Day was 10-3 with zero offensive touchdowns.    

UCLA: Chip Kelly, your time has come… for another beer!  The Bruins may have turned a corner.

Rolling along: Cincy, Utah, Coastal Carolina, Bama.  Iowa Hawkeyes, enjoy your cold one, but remember, Ferentz does this every few years or so to keep his job: he makes some noise, maybe wins his division, and then it’s 7-5, 8-4, 7-5, rinse-and-repeat.   

5) T-sip watch: yes, Texas may be back.  Specifically, Texas may be a running back named Bijan Robinson.  Brother McNeil, Brother Rienstra, can you show the congregation that your team is more than a stellar runner and a hot young QB?

6) Elsewhere: Guns Up!  The Tech Mafia makes a statement over its soon-to-be-cross-state-in-conference rivals (condolences to Brother Duplantis).  Alas, the Owls had Arkansas right where they wanted them, but then they remembered that they’re Rice and let the game get away from them.   Baylor outlasted Texas State, but the year is still young.  Did Lamar play this weekend?  

7) Airing of the Grievances: this is an old one, but it really came out in the second quarter in the OU/Tulane game when the replay people took a longer forever than usual to make a call on an out-of-bounds play near the goal line.  Folks, this is 20211  You’re telling me that with all of ESPN/ABC’s resources, you can’t have a time-stamp on every camera feed so that you can instantly align all replay angles simultaneously?  

8) Bama, Ohio State, and Georgia are in leagues of their own at this point.  After that, there is a serious drop-off.  We can debate whether A&M should jump OU (flip a coin), or if Clemson should fall out of the Top Five (they should), but for now that four-spot is a sacrificial lamb.  This may change as the season goes on.

9) Barometer games for the coming week are not just about the big games.  They are also measures of relative strength, reexaminations of earlier assumptions, and morbid curiosity.  So for the coming weekend, I ask for wisdom and discernment for the following contests:

• Coastal Carolina/ Kansas
• Ohio State/Oregon
• OkieState/Tulsa
• Pitt/Tenn
• UCLA/Fresno State
• Ags/Colorado
• Iowa/ISU
• Texas/Arkansas
• Washington/Michigan
• Utah/BYU

And now, beloved, let us depart in a spirit of certainty, much as Coach Edsall at UConn knowing immediately after his game was over that he would be “retiring” at season’s end.